Half Life: The Stranger
by ElLordOfDasPleb
Summary: A Young Woman is saved from death in a City 17 corridor by a living relic from a race long forgotten... One-Shot Pretty Violent, some feedback would be nice.


**Half Life: The Stranger**

 **2029\. Several Months before the arrival of the one Freeman…**

City 17 was often at its most beautiful in autumn. The Combine were never a group known for their love of architecture, wrenching their own sickly constructs into the dying Earth effectively rung the life and allure from the world years ago. This coupled with the sparse leaves drifting across the pavement made Autumn a reminder of the old world. A mere distraction from the screams and abject suffering.

Being a citizen in what remained of civilisation was no easy task, better yet it was one that required a sheer will to surpass all odds. Most died trying with the knowledge they were the last humanity had to offer.

Curfew had been emplaced and if you were caught outside the ghettos before evening you were dead. Simple as that.

"Stop! We didn't do anything!"

The younger woman begged, pleaded in fact with the two officers currently siphoning the life from her husband, a flurry of blows delivered to his ribcage, inklings of blood carpeting the floor beneath the weaker man's mouth. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time it seemed. Neither of the officers delivering the beating withheld, given the fact that the band of miscreants were now in a maintenance tunnel beneath the city square; It was more than unlikely that help would be coming.

Before one of the officers could plunge his knife into the woman's abdomen, all the assailants were halted by a single noise. A haggard breathing tumbling its way through the steam-filled corridors. The younger man barely had time to regain both his composure and his breathing, his lover embracing him before the inevitable took their lives from them.

"Hamilton check that out, I'll guard the organics".

The officer in duty took position by the middle of the hall, ready to deliver another senseless beating. What he was greeted with shocked practically everyone in the corridor.

An older man, stumbling his way towards the attack. He appeared weary, as though a lifetime of cruelty had weighed down upon him. The old man had a fringe of grey-brown hair around his receding, battered face. The face itself was scarred like a book worn and forgotten. His eyes. They burned with a sorrow and indifference that you felt as though this man carried the damnation of Earth itself upon his shoulders. With each movement there was the creak of old bones, he moved as though it physically hurt him, mechanic almost. This stranger had the pained look of one who knows that at his advanced age there is nothing left in the world, not even this one. Most peculiarly he moved with the fragility of an older man but still had a youth within his gait. His standard citizen attire seemed at least two hundred years old, if not more. He was quite clearly also in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The man let out a few words in a terse, confused manner. A voice that seemed Canadian, warm and most of all strained.

"Guys, you don't want to do this".

Both Metro Officers laughed robotically and soullessly, the man raised both his fists and lunged like a rabid animal before he was struck down instantaneously by a stray bullet. Blood etched the halls and worst of all this seemed meaningless. Senseless.

"You bastards!"

The younger man quickly tackled the responsible officer, clutching a rock and bashing the Combine's head repeatedly as his wife pleaded for him to give up his pointless advances. It was effortless however, he was taken from behind by 'Hamilton'.

His jugular had been torn apart by a serrated edge. Like a fine slice, the cut was clean but this did not stop the advance of blood soaking both his clothes and the floor beneath him. His body crumpled like unwanted paper, the beaten Combine struggling to arise. One less human alive it seemed.

Hamilton helped his comrade to his feet. The beating was insufficient to deliver a killing blow although there were dents within the officer's breathing apparatus. They now turned their attention now to the woman who was in a state of malaise that appeared closer to abject misery than outright anger. Before she too could be silenced, the impossible happened. The stranger was reborn from death, with a vigour as though he had done this often.

It seemed impossible, yet the bullet squirmed its way from his head and rattled on the steel floor like the components of a piano. Of all the anger in the room that night, it resided in this one man. He had seen death too often, you could tell and the Combine officers become unnerved to the point of cowardice. The beaten officer unholstered his revolver and shot 5 more bullets into the elderly man's centre mass, wiping away flesh and sinew like tears in the rain yet it did nothing. While the man was visibly harmed and clutched his wounds he did not fall, these too healed in a mere matter of seconds. Officer Hamilton was frankly terrified, yet he charged down the hall and valiantly plunged his knife into the man's shoulder.

The older man was unscathed, as fresh blood poured from his wounds he unsheathed knives of own but not from his pockets.

From his very fists.

Blades or claws or whatever they looked like to Hamilton escaped the man's fists and they must have been made from an unknown metal, could have been dark matter but Hamilton was grasping at straws here. It looked painful yes, they looked sharp enough to cut through obsidian in a mere stroke, but he was in absolute awe. He plunged his knife in and out rapidly to match those of his opponent before he was lifted from his feet by these…things. Sheer agony awaited. They had entered his stomach like a wind through paper, three blades on each fist and the older man roared like a wild beast in the officer's face, ripping and tearing haggardly, entrails flopped to the floor en masse till the ensnared Combine was a gnarled piece of totalitarian meat.

This hulk of man, threw the officer to the floor with extreme contempt for his enemy, the remaining officer couldn't process any of this. He backed away quickly and pulled the woman to his side, his gun aimed firmly at her head in an embrace that meant certain death for those that were still welcomed by it.

The Stranger picked up his pace, speckled with blood on his metallic claws and with a large amount caked on his clothing; he was clearly eager for vengeance. He had had enough.

"Stay back man! I'll do it! I'll kill her, don't you believe me? I'll shoot this bitch!".

The man stopped his advance. At will, his claws receded back into his tortured flesh and he was ready to listen. The Officer released the woman in what looked like a desperate shove. She toppled to the floor and the Combine went face to face with this beast in an unholy display of hubris.

With no forewarning, The Stranger clutched the officer by the throat and had one fist aimed firmly upwards to the officer's chin, the officer whimpered and muttered incoherent babble under his visor which must have been a cry for mercy.

"I believe you" the Stranger spat in the Combine's face with a virulent hatred.

He plunged his blades upwards through his prey's skull with a palpable fleshy sound and the pinnacle of the blades could barely be seen reaching through the top of his head. He was tossed aside on the floor. The Stranger had an air of fear about him now and he reached out for the woman lying on the floor, catatonic. She was hesitant to take his hand at first and reclined but she had nothing else to lose. He pulled her to her feet.

"You need to trust me on this, run as far you can from here, more of them should be coming any minute now".

While this man had stumbled upon an act of brutality, he had at least saved the woman. One less statistic on the bloody hands of the Combine Empire. She took heed of his words and before she wandered into the night she asked him a simple question.

"Will you be alright? They'll be heavily armed and I doubt even you could stop them".

"They won't".

He unsheathed his claws, clearly wounded and charged off into the halls to allow the woman time to escape. She was stranded alone with the deceased body of her husband and two mangled rags of authority surrounded her. She took one last look and fled off as the Stranger had suggested.

By dawn when she had returned to her Apartment she couldn't quite believe what she had witnessed that night. How could such a man dispatch two trained Combine Officers with ease? The way he moved, the way he dissected them…

 **He was like a Wolverine on the prowl.**


End file.
